We need to better support women facing online hate just for doing their jobs
Ahead of International Women’s Day, Quiip’s Amber Robinson looks at the abuse women face online in the course of doing their jobs, and explains why employers need to do better, starting with ensuring women don’t have to moderate their own hate.
As we celebrate female achievement this International Women’s Day, it’s important to remember that when women step up, there is often a price to pay.
A landmark study by Amnesty International used machine-learning software to analyse tweets sent to a sample of 778 women politicians and journalists. It found that 7.1%, or 1.1m, of those tweets were either “problematic” or “abusive,” which Amnesty International said amounts to one abusive tweet sent every 30 seconds.
This mirrors other research, such as an investigation by The Guardian which found that, of the top 10 regular writers who received the most abuse, eight were women. Female authors writing about sport, technology, feminism, or rape got more abuse than any other.
These comments reveal only that reactive snapshot of a scared or hurting mind at a particular point in time. So long as we all call out trolls – loudly – when we see this, and recognise this as the zero-sum energy sucking powerplay it is, the trolls will end up effectively trolling themselves. They need to be directed towards help because they obviously aren’t handling modern life’s complexities all that well. It’s up to us to pull this into the light and help both sets of victims.